The One Percent: A Culture of Poverty?

Most sociologists have focused on the poor. Speculating here, there may be several reasons for this. They are perceived as being a major problem for society, there are a lot of them, and they are relatively easy to study: they are often powerless to resist being poked and prodded and put under a microscope.

But what about the very rich? From warping politics to skewing US society toward greater inequality, they are a group that has had a profound impact on US society. But they are relatively opaque. We know little about how and why they behave the way they do and what might be the implications of their behaviors. At the very minimum, they seem to be profoundly unhappy and feel they are unappreciated lately.

So one project I am working on is to use the frameworks of analysis used to understand the poor as a means to analyze the wealthy. Te results, which should be ready for publication in the spring, are very interesting and potentially informative for public policy.